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“Brand safety and the unblocked web” presents the findings of a research collaboration between the UK advertisers body ISBA, the Advertising Research Foundation, and PageFair. It shows how adblock users actually react when shown ads that adblock tools cannot tamper with. It also shows how this “unblocked” audience of adblock users responds to brands shown in those ads.
Over 2,300 study participants were shown LEAN display format ads on several premium websites. These ads adhere to the Coalition For Better Ads initial standard, and address adblock users’ legitimate UX, bandwidth, and security grievances.
ISBA, the ARF, and PageFair found that the unblocked audience is brand safe. Indeed, adblock users react more favorably to advertised brands than regular users in some cases.…

Brands face serious new risks under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation (ePR), and agencies will not be able to shield them. This note explains why, and describes what these risks are.
When the GDPR and the ePrivacy Regulation (ePR) apply a year from now brands that use personal data in their marketing campaigns will become exposed to new legal risks, irrespective of their arrangements with ad agencies. Though the new rules are European, the exposure will be global.
Access the GDPR/ePR repositoryA repository of GDPR and ePrivacy Regulation explainers, official docs, and current status.Access Now
Brands are directly exposed for two reasons.
Why agencies can not shield brands
The first reason is legal. The first reason is that the text of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) says that “each controller or processor shall be held liable for the entire damage”, where more than one controller or processor are “involved in the same processing”[1]. …

Lightly edited transcription of PageFair remarks at rapporteur’s sessions at the European Parliament in Brussels on 29 May 2017, concerning the ePrivacy Regulation. Statement at roundtable on Articles 9, and 10.
Dr Johnny Ryan: Thank you. PageFair is a European adtech company. We are very much in support of the Regulation as proposed, in so far as it relates to online behavioural advertising (OBA).…

Pseudonymization will not save online advertising companies from having to seek consent to use browsing and other personal data. This note explains why.
Personal data will become toxic in May 2018 when the General Data Protection Regulation is applied, unless data subjects have given consent.[1]
Some businesses may try to rely on “pseudonymization”, a partial method of anonymization, to continue to use personal data without consent. This would be a mistake, as the GDPR (and a previous opinion from the Article 29 Working Party[2]).…

Lightly edited transcription of PageFair remarks at European Parliament ALDE session on 4 May 2017.
Dr Johnny Ryan: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. I’ve been on both sides: the adtech side, and the publisher’s side, of the particular part of this story that I want to talk about. Several years ago I was at The Irish Times as Chief Innovation Officer, and my background before that was academic: I wrote a history of the Internet, which is now a standard text. Now I work at PageFair, a European adtech company, based primarily in Dublin.
I want to make clear that my remarks are limited only to the ePrivacy Regulation as it affects online advertising. There may be issues with other domains.…

Programmatic online advertising will not cease to exist because of the GDPR or the proposed ePrivacy Directive. Personally-identifiable information (PII) may seem essential to digital advertising, but it is not the only way to target a relevant audience. Targeting based on context was a reliable method for decades before we came to rely on collecting and cross-referencing vast amounts of intrusive data.

Unusually for an ad-tech company, PageFair supports the proposed ePrivacy Regulation. Here is why.
Additional note (11 May 2017): our position concerns the proposal’s impact on online behavioural advertising (OBA). Though there are kinks to work out, as we note in our recent statement to Parliament representatives, we strongly endorse the proposal’s broad approach to OBA.
The European Commission has proposed new rules for ePrivacy, which will supplement the GDPR.[1] Unlike colleagues in other digital advertising companies, PageFair commends the proposed privacy protections for online advertising.
Access the GDPR/ePR repositoryA repository of GDPR and ePrivacy Regulation explainers, official docs, and current status.Access Now
PageFair has taken this position for two reasons.
First, personal data are not required for online advertising.
The online advertising system can deliver relevant ads without the need to use personal data, or third party cookies that collect personal data.…

This whitepaper, “The Hidden Cost of Adblock”, presents the primary findings of research by Professor Benjamin Shiller (Brandeis University), Professor Joel Waldfogel (University of Minnesota and the National Bureau of Economic Research), and Dr Johnny Ryan (PageFair).
It reveals that adblock has a hidden cost: it not only reduces small and medium publishers’ revenue, it reduces their traffic too.
Every 1% increase in adblocked web traffic produced a 0.67% decrease in site traffic for small and medium sites.
Significant adblock usage by a website’s audience usually causes a temporary boost to its page traffic. This short term effect occurs because adblock users can enjoy the site without advertising.
Over three years the majority of websites sites with high adblock rates saw their traffic levels significantly decrease relative to other websites.…

Eyeo, the owners of Adblock Plus, recently revealed an external “Acceptable Ads Committee” to legitimize its extortion of publishers. The committee has considerable powers to alter the “Acceptable Ad” standard, though the process for doing so is difficult. But this control is illusory. The rules that Eyeo has written for this committee mean that its members have no power.